As the Somali people,
Taught you in a poem,
Last year, Warsan Shire,
Of Kenya, says on coming,
To America,

“Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg

beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here”

Oğul (Son), Erbil, Iraq is war torn,
After the chemical attack,
Not safe, learn to love,
In the fogs of poison gas,
Oğul (Son), do not be angry,

When the mustard gas,
Makes you blind as a bat,
Learn to be a bat,
See with your ears,

When nerve agents fall,VX, sarin, and tabun,
Do not blame, or get angry,
With British, German, or Russian,
Chemists, simply get a Ph.D.,

Get a Ph.D. in chemistry,
From the best school,
For chemistry in the world,
University of California, Berkeley,
Learn how they are made,
How they work, so you,

Can can feel what your,
Brothers and sisters felt,
Discover the molecular basis,
Of their screams of agony,
So you can deliver them in poetry,

Meditate on their pain,
For seven years more,
In your postdoctoral research,
To discover what the gas feels like,

In your body, mind, and spirit,
Learn to feel what it feels,
Learn to be gas, you are vapor,
Air, more space than matter,

Oğul (Son), you are empty so you can love,
Wake up America, ask them for help,
Allah has sent you to them,
To help, Kaya, rock, you are a helper,

Allah has trained you to heal,
Oğul (Son), recite after me,
Mountains do not do politics,
Today, we are doing deserts,
Tomorrow, we will build,
The mountains peacefully,

Oğul (Son), never be a purist,
There is no such thing,
Everything in life,
Has two sides,

Yin and yang,
Male and female,
Black and white,

From these binaries,
All the colors of life,
Emerge, rainbows,
Children, with love,
From man and woman,
Wolves and lambs,

Our bloodline’s survival,
Oğul (Son), depends on it,
Oğul (Son), I loved your mother,
For who she was, but I am,

Like a king, flying, promiscuous,
From flower to flower,
Do not be like me Oğul (Son),
Be a man, find a wife,

Do your best,
Make her happy,
Scrape by,
Survive,
…

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About kayaerbil

I am a Berkeley educated chemistry Ph.D. who is moving into the area of working on developing appropriate technology for communities that are subjected to socio-economic oppression. The goal is to use simple and effective designs to empower people to live better lives. Currently, I am working with Native Americans on Pine Ridge, the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. I am working with a Native owned and run solar energy company. We are currently working on building a compressed earth block (CEB) house that showcases many of the technologies that the company has developed. The CEB house is made of locally derived resources, earth from the reservation. The blocks are naturally thermally insulating, keeping the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Eventually, a solar air heater and photovoltaic panels will be installed into the house to power the home and keep it warm, while preserving the house off the grid. A side project while in Pine Ridge is a solar computer. I hope to learn about blockchain encryption software for building microgrids. In addition, it is an immediate interest of mine to involve local youth in technology education.

Poet: Data, Climate Change, the West, and the Islamic World

Dr. Kaya Erbil

kaya.erbil@protonmail.com

Atlanta, GA

I make money any way I can to finish a book of poetry on climate change, the West, and the Islamic World. Been working on this book for eight years. Features a raw and gritty personal story of mental illness. The book explores themes around religion, and tries to place a framework around the current War on Terror/global Islamic fundamentalist jihad. Relates technology and weapons of war to their basic scientific origin, digging deeper to find their mythological sources. Ending with a 500 year time travel journey to illuminate the public on the Islamic origin of Copernicus’s discovery, Arabic language semantics are explored to ask why the West gained a 500 year dominance. Back to 2018, faced with the existential dilemma of climate changed induced geopolitical apocalypse I will compare Islamic finance to Western capitalism and prove it to be superior as a framework for modern ecological economic. All these poems point back to the fight between Ishmael and Isaac. They both will realize that perhaps Ruth or Mary were the ones we should have written more about…